Flash House

by Aimee E. Liu

  “Oh, this is probably nothing, but there’s apparently a file on him.”

  “Lawrence?” Joanna stared at her, then burst out laughing. “Who isn’t there a file on!”

  “You told me he worked with British S.O. during the war,” Bertie pressed. “Maybe you know, there were a lot of Communists connected with Special Operations.”

  “Lawrence also worked with MacArthur. Was he a Communist?”

  Bertie blew out a stream of smoke. “Doesn’t it strike you as odd, this man wandering around India, ostensibly doing research, but without a job or a family, checks coming in at regular intervals—”

  “And what about you, Bertie! What’s your job?”

  That threw her. She smoothed the blue crepe lap of her dress and crossed her legs. Her round little toes wagged up and down, barely missing the edge of the low table as she reached to stub out her cigarette. After a long silence she said, “I heard Bill on the phone the other night. He mentioned your husband’s name, so I stopped to listen. He was talking about your husband. Something about it being a setup. Then he brought up Lawrence Malcolm—‘This Malcolm guy really cultivated Shaw.’ That’s what he said. He asked if it was true Lawrence recruited your husband and sent him up to Kashmir.”

  Joanna squinted at the shimmering tops of the palm trees that ringed the hotel grounds. She took a final swallow of her drink, then asked, “Was it Bob Cross?”

  “Who?” Bertie picked up her purse and rummaged through it for a mirror and lipstick, which she chose this moment to apply.

  “On the other end of the phone. Cross. He’s in the embassy. Consular attaché.”

  The resulting kiss of red was crooked. “I’ve never heard that name. No. I don’t know who it was.”

  Joanna backed up a beat. Smart thing is to bring yourself up to snuff and climb along onto her team. “What exactly do they think Lawrence is doing?”

  “I don’t know,” Bertie repeated. “Spying, I guess. But not for us, from the sound of it.”

  “I wouldn’t think so. He’s Australian.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Joanna didn’t say anything.

  Bertie shook out another cigarette from her pack of Lucky Strikes. But she didn’t light it. “Whether you believe me or not is up to you. I like you, Joanna. Which is more than I can say for most of the other Americans here. I just thought you’d want to know.”

  3

  He had barely set down his bags when Mrs. D’Costa appeared at his door waving a fistful of mail. “You are too trusting, Mr. Malcolm, going away for months at a stretch. Here I come this very morning to find a young rascal nosing about. Shooh! I say, what are you doing, and he says, I am just leaving a chit for Mr. Malcolm. Then why are you lingering? I ask him. Oh, he says, I just want to make sure it doesn’t get lost. Well, you leave it to me, I say and push him straight out the door. Can you believe it? Who knows what he might have done had I not come along? I am telling you, I would be happy to have a locked mailbox installed for you, Mr. Malcolm. Just a few annahs for peace of mind.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. D’, but you’ve made this kind offer on many occasions, and I assure you, there’s nothing in my mail a thief would want. I’d much rather give you an extra annah for my peace of mind than waste it on a bit of tin.” To her delight he pulled a coin from her ear and traded it for the mail. In point of fact, the old woman was more reliable than any lock box. But he pitied her, which complicated their relationship. Age had worked on Mrs. D’Costa like a landslide, and her eyes and bones and teeth were lost beneath multiple pleats of flesh. She smelled like gently rotting fruit, and because she was Goan, with mostly Portuguese blood, she presumed a special affinity with Lawrence (as opposed to the other, Indian, tenants), had twice appeared at his door after midnight bearing a bottle of Jameson’s as a token of mutual understanding.

  He shuddered at the recollection as he shut the door on her ruined features, her mouth still moving. If he went away again, he must install someone here in his flat—someone he trusted—to hold her at bay.

  To distance himself now, he took his mail out onto the balcony, where the cold gray morning light and babble of the street curled over him like a breaking wave. It was not yet eight o’clock, and already the owner of the hardware shop next door was screaming at one of his clerks. Another version of Mrs. D’s diatribe. “What do you think, you can come and go as you please, any time, any day, you are welcome, so dazzling your smile, so devoted your customers, I am hiring you out of the goodness of my heart because you come to me weeping with despair, your father has died and your studies cut short, all the weight of your family falls on your poor young shoulders, and this is how you repay me! Strolling in after two days gone, demanding your pay a day early, you must think suddenly I am working for you…”

  “I lift you up, you put me down,” Lawrence muttered to himself. The outrage of the savior over the ingratitude of the saved. It was a scene the British had played to perfection—until the ingrates finally kicked them out. Now the newly minted local sahibs had usurped the script, performing the lines with a zest and vengeance all their own. This borrowed arrogance used to infuriate Aidan more than the colonial attitudes that had spawned it. As if tyrannizing someone of another race was somehow more palatable than lording it over one’s own. That was his British schooling again, Lawrence supposed. As was his whole notion of a Greater Good. The image of a puppet master pulling the strings of shadow figures across a stage. During the original Game the two puppet masters had been Britain and Russia. Now they were Communism and Democracy, with Aidan himself the shadow. But which master pulled his strings?

  He turned from the ongoing squabble below and flipped through the bundles of mail Mrs. D’ had collected. Anything of formal importance was funneled through the High Commission. Here was a note from Rodney Tynsdale in Sydney asking when he planned to finish his manuscript. Announcements of sale days in Connaught Place. A birthday card from Tracy wishing him well and informing him that she and her new husband had moved to England. He dropped these into the small oil drum that served as his fireplace. But one envelope bore no stamp or return address, only Lawrence’s name, typewritten. This was clearly Mrs. D’s mystery delivery.

  He ripped open the envelope. Enjoying the reports of your walkabout. Hope to catch up in person during your stop home en route to the States. Jack.

  Permission granted.

  Lawrence stared over the roof blocks at the sun’s reddish blur burning through the mist. Then he dropped this paper into the drum with the others and followed it with a lit match.

  Half an hour later at Ratendone Road Kamla opened the door.

  “Princess!” Lawrence bowed from the waist.

  She must have been dressing for school, he thought while awaiting permission to rise. Her blouse was out of her navy skirt, on her feet only bobby socks. She must have heard his knock and run downstairs. Nagu would have answered, but he was in the kitchen scolding the cook. A new cook, judging by the clatter of pots and the weariness in Nagu’s voice. Two eggs for memsahib’s breakfast. Joanna would be in her bedroom, and Simon either out with Nagu’s boys or making faces in the mirror as he brushed his teeth. Lawrence felt the household’s morning rituals take hold of him like a warm glove. Then he remembered: Aidan was alive.

  Kamla didn’t move. She didn’t speak. At length he stood up feeling foolish and guilty. It had been three months. The girl had grown inches taller. Just look how her shoulders strained at the seams of her blouse. She was losing the childlike roundness of her face and throat. Her cheekbones seemed higher, her chin and nose more tapered. And those lake blue eyes, always arresting, now reproached him.

  He grinned sheepishly and held up a paper bag containing two stuffed elephants that he saw would not do at all. “For you and Simon.”

  She gestured vaguely toward the stairs. “Mem is dressing.”

  “Kammy—” He reached out but she pulled away from him, an emotion that he could not read darting across her
face.

  “I will tell her you’ve come.” She let go of the door, her look warning him to stay where he was. She lifted her chin and straightened her back and smoothed her palms on her skirt as she marched up the stairs.

  It’s the cold-shoulder treatment, he thought, both dismayed and impressed at her polish. She’s furious I’ve been gone so long, and this is how she shows it.

  But if Kamla had mastered the art of sangfroid, Simon was raw nerve. “Where have you been!” the boy screamed, tearing past her down the stairs and hurling himself into Lawrence’s arms. They hugged, violently, crazily. Simon was still wearing his red pajamas and he smelled just as he should—of dirt and grass and sticky sweets. Even his accusation was welcoming. “We didn’t think you were ever coming back!”

  “Of course, I was. Didn’t you get my postcards?” He had not, like Aidan, simply disappeared.

  “But you never said you were coming back!”

  “I just didn’t know when, that’s all.” He tousled the boy’s hair and put him down. “Here.” He passed him the bag, which now had a long rip down one side.

  Simon pulled out the elephants, went deadpan, then whacked them against each other by their trunks, so hard their embroidered howdahs fell off. “Wham, wham, wham.” Simon contributed the sound effects, then just as suddenly stopped and grinned. “Thanks.”

  “I guess you’re back in school.”

  Simon shifted both elephants to one hand and reached into the breast pocket of his pajama top. “Want some Bazooka? My friend Brian brought it from home.”

  “Thanks,” Lawrence said. “You mean the States?”

  “Yeah. He just moved here. We’re friends.” He wrinkled his nose, and Lawrence detected a note of defiance in his voice. “Kammy’s not in my class again this year.”

  “No?”

  “She’s two classes ahead now. All she does is read. She wears Mem out.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “All Mem does is work.” Simon lifted his brown eyes with a look of surprise, as if only this minute realizing that two plus three is five. “Why did you have to go away?”

  “Simon.” Joanna stood at the top of the stairs. “Time for school. Better get dressed.” Her voice was tight. She wore a long gray skirt and chalk-colored blouse. Her hair was pulled into a knot, her face unnaturally pale. The effect, Lawrence thought, was of a handsome but overworked schoolteacher.

  Simon sighed and looked down at the paper bag by his feet. He kicked it aside but did not pick it up as he started back upstairs. The two elephants dangled from his hands like vanquished dinosaurs.

  She led him into the living room, refusing to meet his eyes. Every detail was as he’d last seen it—the arrangement of furniture in an open square, the game table with Aidan’s chess set, the stacks of big band phonograph albums. And the photographs of Aidan still smiling down. Every single one.

  “I got your note.” She remained standing.

  Lawrence sat on the sofa. “Fair warning.”

  “I’m not sure where to begin.”

  His eyes fell to her hands. She was wringing them, but that’s not what caught his attention. She was wearing her wedding band again. “Has something happened?”

  “Ben Eldon came to Delhi last month,” she said.

  The teakettle whistled in the kitchen, and Nagu appeared through the open panels to the dining room. He welcomed Lawrence with his usual warm but noncommittal smile and asked if he should bring coffee. Joanna shook her head. “Nothing, thank you. But could you get the children breakfasted and off in a rickshaw to school? I won’t be able to take them this morning.”

  “But of course, Mem.” The bearer dropped his eyes and closed the panels after him.

  “And?” Lawrence asked.

  She leaned her head against the wall. The cool morning light flushed the shadows from her eyes but illuminated the new, fine lines that had etched her skin in his absence. When she spoke her voice broke. “Aidan’s alive.”

  Lawrence fisted one hand and wrapped it in the other. “Go on.”

  “Ben thinks he’s defected.”

  “What’s the evidence?”

  Outside in the hall Simon shouted to Kamla. A clamor of feet and dishes sounded in the dining room. Joanna signaled Lawrence to follow her.

  Upstairs she shut the bedroom door behind them. The tats were up, the French doors open to the balcony so that the room seemed thick with orange sunlight. The familiar paisley spread lay in a crumpled twist over the unmade bed, and the clutter of books and magazines, pads of paper and pencils and empty drinking glasses on the bedside tables suggested more than one restless night. The only photographs on display here were of Simon and Kamla.

  She had her back to him, was unlocking the desk drawer. When she turned she held a piece of newsprint.

  A car backfired out in the street. Lawrence felt the concussion in his chest. Then a wave of nausea as he took hold of the clipping.

  “Eldon gave you this?” he asked.

  “No…” She leaned back against the desk, bracing herself with her hands. “Ben showed me a different picture. I found this one on my own.”

  As Lawrence stared down at Aidan’s image, Weller’s smirking voice came back to him: I don’t know all the rules they broke…or why.

  He had only to tell her, yes, this makes sense. We were duped, betrayed, should have seen it coming. It’s all Aidan’s fault. But that gold ring warned against it. He could feel her question without her speaking it.

  “Have you gone to the embassy?” he asked.

  She nodded. “They still pretend complete ignorance. Minton wouldn’t even see me. He passed me down to this idiot, Bob Cross, who was so obviously trying to find out whether I knew that I left without telling him anything.”

  He examined the clipping more closely. “How can you be so certain they know? American intelligence is not necessarily fail-safe. You and Eldon may be combing the Chinese press with a more particular purpose than our mates at State. You know what they say about all Chinese looking alike. And Aidan looks remarkably Chinese here.” And remarkably sympathetic to the cadres around him.

  “The photograph Ben showed me was similar to this one, but it wasn’t a news clipping.” She walked past him to the window. “It was blown up, grainy. It looked as if it had been taken covertly. And Ben wasn’t supposed to have it. He took it back almost as soon as he showed it to me, said a friend at the State Department had smuggled it out to him. They know, Lawrence. They definitely know.”

  “Eldon came all the way to India to show you?”

  “He was on his way to Hong Kong, I think. On business. I’d been writing him while you were gone. I didn’t know who else to turn to.”

  “Christ, Jo, I’m sorry. Why didn’t you contact me in Simla?”

  She had her back to him. “You’ve known all along he’s alive. Haven’t you?”

  Downstairs the front door slammed, and through the open window Lawrence heard Nagu’s gentle murmurs walking the children down the driveway, Simon humming “Waltzing Matilda.” Joanna stepped out to the balcony, and waved them goodbye.

  He came up behind her, put his hands on her shoulders. She didn’t move.

  “You’re wrong.” He withdrew his hands. “But you’re right to suspect me. There’s something I should have told you a long time ago.”

  She turned her head. Strands of hair fell into her eyes, and one thin blue vein pulsed against the paler surface of her temple.

  “Come and sit down,” he said. “This needs a bit of explaining.” He took the wooden chair against the wall. She shut the glass doors and sat on the bed, again averting her eyes.

  “I’m responsible for Aidan going to Kashmir,” he said. “That tip about the Czech trying to sabotage the U.N. mission. I fed it to Aidan, thought I was doing him a favor—though that’s only part of it.”

  “What kind of a favor?” Her voice sounded hollow.

  “I need to back up. After the war, when I joined the E
xternal Affairs Department, I started sliding into intelligence work. Mostly at home or at conferences, I’d monitor visiting diplomats who might be Soviet sympathizers. It wasn’t official exactly. More like a favor I was doing on the side for certain powers that be. But after Davey died and I announced my intention to leave Australia—to leave everything, really—my superior offered to send me here as a kind of experiment.”

  “Experiment?”

  “There’s a push on to launch a bona fide Australian Intelligence Agency—like your CIA. But there’s also political opposition. Not all the ministers are as keen as mine on the value of cloak-and-dagger games against the Communists. So my job was to prove our worth, set up a preliminary network, conduct a trial operation…”

  A small brown lizard darted across the ceiling. Running upside down. Joanna watched it.

  “I received some information,” he went on, “that this Czech official was bent on destroying the peace plan up in Kashmir. My higher-ups passed this on to their counterparts in Washington, and it was decided that the best strategy would be to expose the man publicly through the press. Show the Reds as enemies of the United Nations as well as of the Free World. We needed a journalist, but the Yanks didn’t want it to be an American.”

  “Aidan is an American.”

  “No, Joanna. He had clearly been labeled as un-American by your own FBI. My department knew about my acquaintance with Aidan. And they knew he was here. Sydney, not Washington, gave me my orders.”

  “So you didn’t just run into each other up there on the Khyber Pass.”

  “Not exactly.”

  “You recruited him, in other words.” Her calm chilled him.

  “It never occurred to me he’d be gone more than a couple of weeks. I swear to you, Jo.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because you believed in Aidan, you loved him. I knew you’d turn against me. And it was just too dangerous for you to know.”

  “It would have compromised you,” she said acidly.

  “That’s irrelevant now.” He rubbed his eyes, wished they could leave this room. “Look, I didn’t know anything about this.” He tapped the clipping. “But I’ve turned up a few things that may help to explain it. Your friend Akbar, apparently, was more influential than you realized.”